Theatre of Noise:
As you likely already know, Second Life (SL) is a virtual world in which a player takes on a particular role and can play, do business and otherwise interact with other players through that character. It has become newsworthy as a economy which trades its virtual currency with those in real life (RL). I have a novel business opportunity for a Second Life entrepreneur. As my own corporeal life does not give me enough time to pursue this, I offer it free here for any who wish to profit from it. (This can also make a fortune in other virtual worlds, but I will continue to use SL here as a primary example.)
To recap: Avatars in SL can purchase goods and services, transact land deals, travel by a variety of means including teleportation, and communicate either locally (whisper, talk, shout) or globally (IM). Items can be created in-world or using external software, can be given their own attributes and behaviours, and sold or be left to run autonomously.
Companies are using SL as a virtual meeting room and many educational organisations use virtual locations for training. Prototypes of products are presented first in SL for market research and many artists make their living through SL creations.
There seems to be almost nothing one cannot do in SL, yet I have discovered a lacuna at the center of this world. There is one service not offered to SL avatars, despite it being massively popular in RL.
I speak of the Internet. My business proposal is to offer SL avatars access through Internet cafes, a model that has been shown to work in RL. By charging hourly rates for connections - and providing related services - the business owner would enable avatars to reach out from their limited territory in cyberspace to the much larger communities found in newsgroups, chat rooms, social sites and the web at large. Read on…
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